Edge of a Knife
by HaiJu
Summary: Stray but a little, and it will fall. Oneshot series. Dark alternate endings for Phantom of Truth and its sequel, Shadow of a Doubt.
1. Bananaphone

_This can stand alone, but it was written as an alternate ending to my other fic, Phantom of Truth. It belongs after Chapter 10. Rated T for gore, insanity and scary/icky imagery._

_To get some context, watch this first: www(dot)youtube(dot)com/watch?v=j5C6X9vOEkU_

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><p><strong>Bananaphone<strong>

- by HaiJu -

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><p><em>The sleep of reason brings forth monsters.<em>

_- Francisco Goya_

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><p>"Ring ring ring ring ring ring ring, Bananaphooone,"<p>

Maddie looked up from her dissection tray, hands covered in ectoplasmic gore, and was rewarded by a massive grin from the ghost behind the glass. Phantom winked at her and continued singing cheerfully.

"Ring ring ring ring ring ring ring, Bananaphone!" Maddie sighed, peeling off her gloves so she could massage her forehead. He'd been going at it all day, the exact same song, over and over. Either he'd switched manipulation strategies and decided to drive her crazy...

"I've got this feeling, it's so a-peeling!" he belted out with relish, sending himself into a little spin so that he was sitting totally upside down, "For us to get, together and sing!"

...or he'd just totally lost it. She looked down at what was left of the ghost's hand and sighed again. It had been fascinating, of course, in its human-like detail, but she couldn't formulate any real conclusion because of all the...

"RingringringringringringRING!"

"Phantom!"

"Yes, mother dearest?" She'd fully intended to tell him to shut up, but that stopped her short.

"What did you just call me?"

That eerie, manic grin never faltered, and he leaned back on his crossed arms casually as he responded. "Mother dearest. Is that too much? Maybe just Mom's better. You know I'm crappy at being subtle, Mom. I get that from Dad."

"I've warned you before, Phantom. Don't associate yourself with my family."

"What, you're disowning me now?" The grin was still there, but it had a brittle edge to it now. "Am I not your son anymore?"

"You were never my son! You're a ghost." A sick, twisted, evil ghost.

His chipper attitude vanished like a switch had been flipped. "But Mom...it is me." The smiles were all gone now; he looked close to tears. His voice was quiet, pleading. "Don't you recognize me? I'm Danny."

"Don't play games with me, ghost. Those lies will never work."

"Lies? Lies? But...no, you're right. They have to be lies. You can't be Mom...Mom would never do that to me. Mom wouldn't cut me to pieces. You're the lie, 'Doctor Fenton'."

He floated down to stand up against the glass, pressing his remaining hand against it. The other arm hung limp at his side, the severed stump still dripping ectoplasm onto the containment cell's floor. "Do you want to really play a game?" Phantom's palm began to glow and eerie bright green; Maddie suddenly had a very bad feeling.

"Phantom-"

"SHUT UP!" He snarled at her, eyes suddenly wild, pupil shrunk to tiny pinpoints so that his eyes became almost pure, poison green. "You're the liar." The bullet-proof, supposedly ecto-proof glass groaned, a fine spider web of cracks spreading out from Phantom's fingertips. "You said you wanted the truth. You said that was all you wanted. You SAID that." The cracks spread, green light leaking through them. "Well, I gave in. I told you. But you won't let it go! You don't believe the truth. You're not going to give up until I'm dead. Screw that. I'm not going to let you, fake Mom. We're playing my game now."

Maddie fumbled for the switch, finally flipping on the electrical current. White lightning raced across Phantom's body, and he jerked in response. But instead of collapsing, he smirked. "I've figured it out, fake Mom. This hurts, but it can't kill me." He laughed unpleasantly. "It's kind of stupid when you think about it. Weren't you the one who said I was nothing but a battery? You're charging me right up-you're making me more of a ghost than I ever was before." He tilted his head to one side, eyes crinkling in amusement. "What's already killed me...makes me stronger."

As if on cue, the cracks multiplied, spread to every corner, and the glass wall shattered. Maddie was flung out of her chair at the impact. She found herself again sprawled on the floor, stunned, Phantom standing over her. But whatever had held him back last time was gone. He looked down at her, almost solemn, a hint of pity in his eyes.

"You need a lesson in empathy. Maybe...yeah. Maybe you should try being the ghost for a change." Slowly the crazed grin spread once again across his face.

"Ring ring ring ring ring ring ring," he chuckled, raising his hand, letting the ectoplasm in his aura gather into a vivid, lethal mass around the fist. "I've got this feeling, it's so a-peeling..."

He's insane, Maddie thought numbly. As last thoughts went, it was a weak one.

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><p><em>The End<em>

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><p>I swear I tried to make this funny. It just...kind of turned out this way. Brought to you courtesy of my dark, twisted imagination.<p>

Cheers,

-Hj


	2. Funny

_Continuing to explore other avenues for this to end...set after Chapter Fifteen of PoT._

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><p><strong>Funny<strong>

_-_by Haiju_-_

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><p><em>We are not here to laugh.<em>

_- Charles De Gaulle_

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><p>I tried to make it funny. I really did. That's my job, right? Make a joke. Break the tension. Show people the situation really isn't that bad-even when it really is. I'm the comic relief half of the sidekick duo; well, that and tech support. The less important side, some would say. Not that I'm complaining. I mean, what if I had to be the romantic interest? How awkward would that be?<p>

Oh look, I did it. A joke. Ha, ha.

But that's just inside my head. On the outside I'm gaping like a landed fish, staring at the box in Mrs. Fenton's hands. A tiny box, too small to hold a thermos. Too small for anything alive to be in there.

Mrs. Fenton gives me a strange look, but she's distracted when the BOOmerang comes around again, bumping insistently against the package. She stares at it uncomprehendingly, kind of like how I'm staring at her and that crazy little box. The BOOmerang, souped up by yours truly, was supposed to detect even the faintest trace of Danny's ectosignature. After weeks of searching, we were desperate to find something, anything, that would lead us to him. But when it finally, finally locked on, this is what we find.

Mrs. Fenton turns to me, a question on her lips. I'm already in automatic coverup mode, fumbling for some excuse so I can buy enough time to figure out what this even means. Because there's no way Danny could really be in there. Even ghosts, who could be compressed unbelievably small, had a certain mass. We'd found that out the hard way by overloading the thermos more than once.

I have half of my excuse already formed, but then suddenly I've got nothing, because as she turns I can see the label on the box. In blocky, official-looking white letters it reads PROPERTY OF GIW.

Both of us freeze, shocked into silence-me, at the sudden, awful realization. For Mrs. Fenton, it must have been the look on my face. I don't even know what expression I have.

I bend down, ever so slowly, and pick up the BOOmerang. It tugs gently against my grip, pulling toward the box. That little government-owned box that in no way could fit a ghost.

Mrs. Fenton looks from the box to her old invention. "That's...our ghost-tracking device," she says slowly. "But it never worked. For some reason, it would always lock onto...onto Danny." She's started connecting the dots, I can see it. Maybe she'd already begun to guess, and that was why she'd been standing so uncertainly all alone in the lab, with her Danny-like box that couldn't possibly be Danny. It's only a matter of time till his secret is out. But I don't care anymore.

"Where is he?"

I'm not the only one who's shocked when my voice comes out low and harsh. I sound like some bad cop on an old TV show. It might even be funny if somebody laughed at it. I'm supposed to be the funny one, after all. But no one's laughing. This isn't funny anymore.

Mrs. Fenton looks down at the box, then at me. "You mean...Phantom?"

She looks scared, and if I wasn't absolutely positive now that this was her fault, I might have felt sorry for her.

"Is he in there?" I have to ask, even though I know it's just not possible.

Her hands tighten convulsively around the little package.

"Tucker, why are you looking for Phantom?" But she already knows, I'm sure of it now. Why else would she back away from me like that when I reached for it, clinging to the box as if it held the last shred of her sanity?

My mind starts connecting dots, too. Where has Mrs. Fenton been all this time? Hadn't she been commissioned for some secret government project? Hadn't it taken weeks to get her back, the security was so tight? Wasn't she one of the foremost ghost specialists of the country?

Suddenly I realize that I absolutely, positively do not want to see what's inside that little box.

I let the BOOmerang drop from my hands. It does a half-hearted little loop-de-loop, straining toward the box, then falls at Mrs. Fenton's feet. I'm already at the stairs. I count them as I go up: five, ten, fifteen steps. Nearly twenty feet underground. That's all the information I need. Now I just have to decide whether to cave it in or bury it.

I was supposed to be the funny one, but Danny was supposed to be the hero. The Fentons were supposed to be the good guys. We were supposed to laugh this all off once it was over. It's funny how naive that sounds now.

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><p><em>The End<em>

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><p><em>AN: Please note that this is an unrelated alternate ending, set sometime after Ch. 15 of Phantom of Truth. Deciding to continue this as a short series because my mind is a dark, twisty place. Brownie points to people who can place the quote that inspired the new title._

_-Hj_


	3. The Pallid Mask

_Note: This is a rewrite of Ch. 17 (The Right Regrets) of Phantom of Truth. This is a true alternate ending that assumes that you know everything leading up to that chapter and then takes the story on a different path. What if Phantom didn't have a plan? What if Maddie was right?_

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><p>"Are you ready?"<p>

Phantom took a deep breath, closing his eyes momentarily. Then he opened them, and the softness she'd seen earlier had vanished, leaving only steely determination. "Yeah. Yeah, I'll see you... He cleared his throat and said again, more firmly. "I'll see you later, okay?"

They both knew it was a lie, but Maddie didn't have the heart to call him on it. "Okay."

Phantom's eyes never left her, not even as he dissolved into green smoke. Just before he lost corporeality altogether, his face contorted strangely—some strong emotion that Maddie couldn't decipher. In the next instant, the device had done its work.

"I'm sorry," she said aloud one last time, but in the empty room it sounded hollow.

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><p>Maddie picked up her phone at the front desk—dead. Of course. She hadn't thought to shut it off when she'd turned it in. She sighed and dropped it into her purse, grabbing the handle of her suitcase and following Agent L through the door and into the blinding late summer afternoon. It was going to be a long drive home. Maybe she'd stop and buy some fudge for Jack. He was probably crawling up the walls from missing her.<p>

The house was strangely quiet as the GIW sedan pulled away, red tail lights disappearing around the corner. The FAV was missing from the drive and the lights in the living room were dark. Maddie sighed, feeling a little lonely. They hadn't expected her back so soon, so of course she shouldn't expect them to be waiting.

Maddie found her way across the cluttered living room and clicked on the light in the kitchen. She opened the fridge and slid the fudge in between the caged ecto-weiners and the remnants of a singed-looking casserole. Jazz must have tried cooking again.

"Mom?" Maddie jumped at the voice, turning toward the stairs that led down to the lab. Her son stood in the doorway, his eyes—blue, not green—studying her in puzzlement.

"Danny?" For some reason, her voice came out strange.

He looked so… healthy. That was the first word that came to mind. She had gotten so used to that wasted frame and those gaunt features, it was a shock to see the full roundness of his flesh, that healthy pinkish tint to his skin. He set down the soda he'd been holding and came toward her, an easy smile on his face.

"You're back really early. The house is a mess, but it's Jazz's fault, not mine, she—hey!"

Maddie wasn't even listening. She snatched him up in a hug and squeezed him hard, feeling his warm, strong wholeness, smelling his musty old t-shirt and the barest hint cologne—which Sam had ironically given him and he'd not-so-ironically worn ever since.

She'd known of course, that Phantom and Danny weren't the same person. Phantom was a ghost. Danny was, and had always been human. She'd always known, but her mind had somehow forgotten the distinction. Part of her had felt that she really had been leaving her Danny, her son behind in that cold government lab. Maddie hadn't realized till this moment how much she'd needed this: to hold him and feel him, to see that her boy was alright.

"You're okay," she found herself saying. "You're okay."

He squirmed against her death grip. "I'm fine, Mom. You're the one acting weird. Maybe I should call Dad…"

"No, no, Danny. I'm fine. Sit down. Tell me how you've been." She wasn't ready to let him out of her sight, not just yet.

"On one condition."

"What's that?"

He grinned down at her with that mischievous glint in his eyes that she knew so well. "You let me have some of that fudge before Dad sees it."

"Deal."

"The first part of my summer of course sucked because of the cruel and unusual punishment of having to make up PE for a month—a month!—with the football team, in the middle of nowhere."

Maddie moved quietly around the kitchen, doing the time-worn rituals of fixing coffee and cutting up the fudge as she listened to Danny chatter on. Each moment seemed to fill some ache that she hadn't realized was there, something that had been building for weeks. This was all she wanted. To see Danny safe, happy, at home.

"There weren't any girls, not one! I mean, there was Teslaff, but trust me, she doesn't count. What kind of summer camp doesn't have girls? Seriously! The cheerleading camp was at the same time, but it went to a completely different campsite on the other side of the woods. How uncool is that?" Danny gestured irritably, reaching for more fudge.

Maddie suppressed a grin. How often had she seen that flustered look in the past couple of weeks? Danny could be so impatient sometimes.

No. She stiffened, coffee in hand, as she realized what she'd just thought. Phantom. It had been Phantom who'd acted so impatient, just like this. Who'd gone on endless spiels, sometimes petty, sometimes profound. Would the agents listen to him? Not likely. There had been talk of gags after she'd informed them of the damage to the containment unit.

"...and then Sam had the brilliant idea of smuggling the frogs out in Tucker's beret. You can imagine how well that went." Danny's eyes crinkled with mirth.

Maddie must be going colorblind, because for an instant they looked green. She was back in the lab, rolling her eyes at some corny crack of Phantom's. It was uncanny, really. Maddie sighed and reached for the creamer. They were so alike.

No. They were…the same. Exactly the same.

"Mom!" Danny jumped to his feet.

"What?" she asked absently.

"What do you mean—Mom, you're pouring cream on the fudge."

She blinked and looked down. So she was. Maddie sighed and pushed away the now soggy dessert, reaching for her coffee instead. She took a sip and made a face at the bitterness. That's right; cream. None of it had actually made it into her cup.

Danny's hand touching hers brought her attention back to him. "Are you sure you're okay?" You seem a little... I don't know, down."

"Work was…" she searched for the right word in vain. "Difficult."

"Seems like it. I've been talking at you for like, twenty minutes now and you haven't said a word. You should get some sleep." He pushed his plate and fork into the already towering pile of dishes in the sink and headed for the door. "Thanks for the fudge."

"You're leaving?" Maddie couldn't help the sudden rush of panic at the thought.

"Geez, mom, did you hear anything I said? Movie night at Sam's. We have to get in at least one more Dead Teacher marathon before school starts up again. That is…" he looked at her uncertainly. "If you're okay. I can cancel if you need me."

She wanted nothing more than to keep him right here. Be rational, she scolded herself. There was no reason to deprive Danny from having fun with his friends. "I…no, no. I'm alright. Be careful on your way there, sweetie."

"If I had a moped I'd get there faster," he grumbled.

The response had become a reflex, so easy to fall into. "Absolutely not! Only one death-defying crash allowed per vehicle type, young man."

"Fine, fine." The familiar banter seemed to relieve both of them. The worry went out of Danny's gaze, and he smiled at her as he reached back to snag one last piece of fudge. "I'll see you later, okay?"

Maddie started. That was the exact same phrase Phantom had used in his last words to her. She didn't trust herself to speak, so she nodded. Some distress must have shown in her face, because he paused one last time, lingering in the doorway. "You sure you'll be okay without me?"

It must have been some trick of the acoustics, some strange interaction of the kitchen tile and stainless steel, because Danny's voice suddenly had that echoing quality. Like a ghost. Like him.

Maddie closed her eyes, and pictured green in place of blue, white traded for black. She conjured up that last expression, the one she couldn't read, and it was suddenly, achingly clear.

She'd seen it when Tucker had been so angry and swore to never speak to Danny again. When Jazz had broken her leg in a ghost attack. When, years ago, Grandma Fenton, who'd so doted on her grandchildren, had passed away suddenly. That face had been a mask of grief.

It was her dear, brave son when he'd lost the battle, but the tears had not yet come.

She clutched her mug. Danny, her son, was right there. Waiting for an answer. "I don't know, Danny. I...I really don't know."

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><p><em>AN: _

_The chapter title is a reference to a character The King in Yellow. Known as the Stranger, he comes as a harbinger of doom to the court of the king, and at the end of the day is asked to remove his deathly mask...only to reveal that it's not a mask, but his true face. Another name for this character? The Phantom of Truth._

_-Hj_


	4. In the End

**Please note:** This is a repost of the prank chapter posted this April for Phantom of Truth. It's an alternate/extended ending set just after the epilogue.

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><p><em>If you look for truth, you may find comfort in the end; if you look for comfort you will not get either comfort or truth, only soft soap and wishful thinking to begin, and in the end, despair.<em>

_- C. S. Lewis_

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><p>The anti-creep stick clanged down the stairs, leaving a ringing silence in its wake.<p>

"Danny?" Maddie breathed.

Near-skeletal, scratched and bruised, he sat behind the kitchen table as if it was the most natural thing in the world. One hand curled around the coffee mug—the blue one, his favorite—the other limp and half-obscured in bloody rags. Danny, here, home.

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><p>Maddie's driving rivaled Jack's as she drove the GAV at breakneck speed to the nearest hospital, all the while trying to call Jack from her cell to give him the good news and ignoring Danny's protests that he was "fine". He'd negated those excused by stepping out of the GAV and promptly collapsing.<p>

She must have made a dramatic figure, kicking open the doors to the ER with Danny in her arms. Maddie had been prepared to have the paperwork filed at blaster-point if necessary, but luckily with all the news coverage they were immediately recognizable and Danny was rushed away by a handful of doctors.

A grim-looking physician cited out the many ailments her son had collected, saying things about severe dehydration and malnutrition, exhaustion, organ damage and critical failures, but she hadn't really listened, because she was sure he'd be okay. He'd smiled at her so readily. He'd come home. They couldn't lose him now.

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><p>"Mr. and Mrs. Fenton, there were some...odd things about Daniel's injuries. Could I get our opinion as ghost professionals? I hate to ask because it is your son we're speaking of, but you are the local authority on the subject."<p>

"You think ghosts are involved?" Jack snatched the proffered clipboard eagerly.

"We're not sure," the doctor said carefully. "These things are just strange, unlikely. Maybe unnatural."

"Things like what?" Maddie took the clipboard from Jack and flipped through the papers.

"He seems to have developed copper poisoning, which we've seen before in cases of overexposure to ectoplasm. There are other oddities that came up in the basic physiological exam. But the strange part is the injuries to his hand."

Maddie found herself staring at an x-ray of the hand, and suddenly it seemed frighteningly familiar. Some dark suspicion began to uncoil from the depths of her brain, little pieces that had been lying quietly for weeks rearing up to click into place.

Danny. A half-remembered accident two years ago, when the portal first activated. Click.

"The break is clean—unnaturally so—and the other internal injuries are sever. Torn ligaments, deep contusions, missing cartilage—"

Maddie was in the lab, pushing aside a stray piece of greenish-white gristle, too preoccupied with the strange cohesive behavior of the muscle-type material to bother replacing it—

"—yet the outer skin is practically intact. Just a couple of shallow scratches, and that's all."

Phantom. Only half ghost. Only half dead. Only half...of what? Suddenly a corpse didn't make as much sense as the answer her mind mockingly hung before her. Half dead. Half alive. Click.

Maddie flipped away from the x-ray only to find a photo of the hand—the thin, regular lines she remembered cutting so carefully outlined in precise, half-healed pink on the unmistakably human hand.

Missing at the same time. Click. Same injuries, down to the last bruise. Click.

"We were thinking it might have been crushed, but that doesn't fully account for this kind of damage. Normally we'd be stumped, but if you take the possibility of phasing through the skin into account..."

Fenton. Phantom. So close they could be the same. Click. Danny. It was the same name, exactly. They were the same.

"It could have been a ghost," Jack was saying. Both of them turned to stare at her as the clipboard slipped through her fingers.

"It wasn't a ghost," she said blankly. "Danny is...he's really... It was...it wasn't a ghost."

The doctor stared at her in blank confusion, but she could see Jack putting two and two together. Her absence. Danny, gone. Phantom, gone. The government project. Click, click, click.

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><p>Danny died on the third day.<p>

He'd fought hard, they said, but it hadn't been enough. All her boy had been through, all the damage that had been done (all that Maddie had done to him) was just too much. Piece by piece his body failed, leaving him clinging to life by a cord, by a thread, by a filament.

In the end, his heart couldn't be convinced to keep beating.

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><p>The Fentons were silent at the funeral. They left the speeches to others—to teachers, to Vlad, to his friends. Their grief was too awful and too raw to be spoken.<p>

Maddie went stiffly through the motions. She had to focus hard to even breathe. Her guilt squeezed at her neck like iron chains. Almost as heavy was the weight of Jack and Jazz's silence beside her. They knew. She didn't know how Jazz had discovered it, if she had maybe known all along. But they knew what she had done. Maddie couldn't blame them for blaming her.

Why didn't you tell me? Maddie begged silently.

But the sleek brown box in the ground had no answer, and too soon it vanished under earth and flowers.

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><p>That night, Maddie woke up alone. Jack's warm bulk was absent from the bed, leaving her feeling chilled and exposed. She could see the closet door standing open from where she lay. She stared at it, knowing what it meant. Wanting to be wrong. Wishing none of this had ever happened.<p>

Maddie got up, slipped on a robe over her pajamas, and opened the door. She walked down the hall. Past Jazz's room; a dull gleam from under the door spoke of her daughter's sleeplessness. Danny's door beside it was dark, as it would always be.

Jack sat at the kitchen table, head buried in his hands. He didn't look up as she came in.

In front of him on the worn tabletop sat a mug of coffee, long gone cool. The blue one. Danny's favorite. Next to it lay a plain black revolver.

It was the only weapon in the Fenton household that they bothered to lock up; normally it resided in the safe at the back of their closet. Unseen, unused, almost forgotten. Maddie much preferred her own inventions; ghost weapons could cause injuries, but they were rarely fatal to humans. Guns, true guns, had always made Maddie uneasy. They existed for the sole purpose of taking life. She used to comfort herself with the notion that her weapons never killed. They just...destroyed. Eliminated. Liquidated.

What a fool she had been.

Jack spoke, still not looking up. "I swore," he said. "When Danny went missing, I swore I'd make whoever was responsible pay for it." His voice shook, a half snarl, half whine like a wounded bear. "With my own hands, I'd—whoever it was...I swore."

Maddie put her arms around Jack's shoulders and squeezed gently. "I know."

She reached over and picked up the gun. Leaning down, she kissed Jack softly. The salt of his tears made it bitter.

Click. The safety disengaged. Maddie put the gun to her temple. Jack closed his eyes.

She pulled the trigger.

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><p><em>AN: As requested, the 2013 April Fools "extended ending" in which everyone dies. A chance for me to explore a more cynical way for this to end...and provide closure. In a manner of speaking._

_This concludes our little side trip into the dark and tragic side of the PoT world. I do have one more dark AU, but unfortunately I've lost the draft so I think that one will stay hypothetical. Thanks for reading!_

_-Hj_


	5. Shadow of a Former Self

Note: This is an AU chapter to Shadow of A Doubt that picks up **after SoaD Chapter 9**. Just a little alternate ending I whipped up for April Fools... enjoy!

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><p><strong>Shadow of a Former Self: You Can't Go Back<strong>

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><p><em>Those who refuse to face history will be doomed to repeat it.<em>

_- Unknown_

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><p>Danny could barely keep himself going in a straight line, but as the charged atmosphere of the Ghost Zone crackled against his aura, he felt himself accelerating. He rocketed into the depths of the poison green void.<p>

It had always been such an alien, frightening place. Groundless, its gravity vague and dizzyingly inconsistent, distorted, full of enemies and the eerie remnants of old, dead worlds. Tonight it embraced him in its curling green arms without question, and Danny dove straight in. Things hadn't changed here. Not like the nightmare he had left on the other side of the portal.

Wrong. It had all gone wrong, from the minute Mom had stepped into the hospital room and pointed an ectogun between his eyes.

Nothing was the way it was supposed to be. It was as if some sick, sadistic hand had reached down into the world and twisted everything into tortured mirrors of reality. His friends, risking their lives to hide him from the ghosts… ghosts he couldn't fight if he tried. Jazz, hurt… And Mom… _Mom had…_

Danny rubbed hot, angry tears from his eyes; his wrist brushed the bloody burn just above his ear, which stung sharply at the touch. The ectoblast had barely grazed him.

She might as well have shot him right through the chest. His heart felt like a pulpy mass of pain—It hurt to even breathe—she'd tried to shoot— she knew and she'd shot him anyway. All of that stuff she'd said, to Phantom, to him, and she'd still squeezed the trigger.

Maddie's wide-eyed, tear-streaked stare flashed into his mind. Danny winced—guilt was a new pang burrowing into a bloody wound. She hadn't meant to. She must be hurting so much right now, hating herself so much worse than even he was.

He should have told her. The second she'd walked into that stupid government lab—no, the second he'd woken up from the portal accident and known that something had changed about him. He should have just sat down and spilled it all. But he hadn't. He was so stupid.

His parents had scared him, in a way, and later it just wasn't convenient. They'd make him follow rules with his ghost hunting… curfews, villains he wasn't allowed to fight. They'd be worried for him all the time. His hero days would be over, because they just wouldn't get it. Or they'd feel so guilty over the whole thing, and he'd never wanted that. There were so many reasons.

Excuses. Stupid excuses. Always just a reason to put it off—and now—

Danny pulled up short, gasping for breath, in the shadow of his destination. A jagged outcropping of dark rock hung suspended in space, with a tower shaped like a massive clock rising out of its center.

It never should have happened. Danny would make sure it didn't.

He landed lightly on the front step, not a second too soon—his aura sparked, fizzled, and he was human again. Newly warm blood pumped madly through his limbs, setting his nerves on fire. Pain spiked in his crippled hand. Danny hissed as the fingers spasmed. He clutched the hand to his chest, eyes shut, gasping for breath. Agony faded to a sick throbbing.

Opening his eyes, Danny stared up at the door.

"Okay," he said aloud. His human voice sounded thin and weak against the eerie atmosphere. As if the zone resented his living presence. Even here he wasn't wanted.

Danny shook off the thought. Taking a deep breath, he stepped through the front door. Stumbling—an unexpected step down—he found himself right in the middle of the ghost's lair, Clockwork's control room.

Hooded statues with curving scythes stood silent guard. Bells, clocks, sundials, and a few devices Danny didn't recognize hung from unlikely places on the walls or rested on oversized gears, their forms silhouetted in the dark, eerie half-light of the inside of the tower. The most riveting feature of the room was the viewing screens. Some barely the size of his hand, others stretching into the shadows above. Strange, seemingly unrelated scenes flashed over their glossy surfaces.

The room was deserted.

I know you know I'm here!" Danny shouted to the indigo shadows that pooled in every recess. "You're supposed to know everything! Where are you?!"

Danny glanced around cautiously; no response. His eyes flickered to a set of hooks on the wall, and sure enough, a collection of time medallions hung there in a neat little row. He walked over to them; they dangled just at eye height, plain, blocky gears with a simple "CW" embossed on the front. When he touched one, it hummed with a mysterious power.

"You rang?"

Danny jumped and whirled, the hand clutching the medallion curling instinctively behind his back.

Suddenly—if such a word could be used for a temporal being—the master of the tower was there. Strong, broad shoulders outlined under a rich purple cloak, holding his staff in a gloved fist like a scepter. The ghost's blue tail wisped into nothing a few feet above the tower's rocky flagstones.

Depthless red eyes stared out of the shadow of his ever-present hood. "What do you want from me?"

"What do you think?" Danny snapped.

"I'm the Master of Time, not of mind reading," Clockwork returned dryly. "Say your piece, young hybrid."

Danny's eyes fell on the screens: A laboratory, sterile and monochrome, except for the vivid green splattered across its stainless steel floor. A rocky outcropping overlooking a sharp drop, silver in the moonlight, with dark figures circling like vultures around one lone silhouette. A sleek white van rolling through a high security gate, its sides emblazoned with the biohazard symbol.

"You knew I'd come," Danny hissed. "You knew what would happen to me. What _did_ happen." He thrust a shaking, accusing finger toward the images —his past—playing out around him. "Now fix it. All of it."

The ghost's eyebrow rose, stretching the zig-zag scar over his eye. "Time needs no fixing; it simply is. Good and evil are only what we make of it."

"Don't give me that philosophical crap," Danny growled. "You change time whenever it suits you. I've seen you do it."

Clockwork shrugged, making a slight gesture with his staff.

Images flashed on the screens, bathing the tower room with a hundred different shades of night and day. Bloody battlefields, glassy-eyed children with bird-thin necks and swollen bellies; a boy clutching a rifle taller than he was falling in a spray of bullets and blood; a woman crouched between a dresser and the wall as a meaty hand rained blows on her swollen face. On and on, a hundred different horrors of humanity.

"So much tragedy, and this in in a small slice of time." Clockwork said. His body had moved seamlessly into that of a child, the smooth, clear young voice giving an odd contrast to the stern words. "What makes yours so special, that I should alter all of time for you? The world isn't in peril. No observants have come beating down my door. Human wrong is as old as the ages. Do you think you deserve better than any other human?"

"N-no, but…" Danny glared at the floor, caught between shame and frustration. Would it really cost Clockwork that much? Did it matter?

"Every change to the time stream has its consequences. One tragedy prevented leaves room for another; this is the nature of things." It was strange to hear such weariness in a child's red eyes seemed to dim.

"I…" Danny licked dry lips. "Could it really be worse than… than this?"

"I think you know that answer," Clockwork said. An image of the Nasty Burger flashed on the vidscreen behind him, blossoming into a cloud of fire. Clockwork reached beneath his cloak, producing a bent and battered metal canister. "Do you know what this is?"

Danny studied the familiar device in Clockwork's hand. Was this some kind of trick question? "A thermos?"

"Look closer."

He peered at the thing obediently, and noticed how it was dented and smudged with soot—and blood—and… some of the dents were sticking out, not in. Like something had made them from the inside. What kind of ghost could… and then it clicked. Dread twisted through his gut.

"That's me? The evil me?" Clockwork's nod confirmed his dread. "But I got rid of him! I'll never turn into that guy… he should be gone, right?"

"You did change the future, but only because of what you witnessed. It created a paradox. If he had never existed, then you would have become him. This Phantom had to exist in order for you to prevent that future. So he continues to exist, outside of time itself." Clockwork tucked the thermos back under his cloak, out of sight. "Which is why he is in my keeping. For a time."

"I don't understand—you're going to let him go? Why would you do that?"

The ghost shook his head. "You don't understand. You or I cannot alter the great tides of history. Fate will return, in ways you cannot foresee, and the new time may be more terrible than what you sought to prevent. Are you willing to face those consequences?"

Danny's fingers drifted up to brush the burn on his neck. His mother's eyes, glassy with horror, hovered stark in his memory. He couldn't imagine things turning out worse than they had. It was impossible.

"I'll do it. I'll do anything. Just… let it be like it was before."

"As you wish," Clockwork sighed, now an old, old man. A white beard flowed down from his wizened face. He leaned on his staff like a cane. The ghost said nothing as Danny slipped the medallion over his head. Without a backward glance, Danny flew through the largest viewing screen, into a distant summer night.

Nothing happened, got that?" Dash pounded his fist in to his palm for emphasis. He was terrified, but that didn't matter right now. What mattered was that the other boys were scared—of him— and that meant they would listen. "There was nothing to see. Some loser went missing; what do you care?"

The boys shuffled uncomfortably, but nobody met his eyes. They did care, some of them, but nobody was Fenton's friend. "And nobody's gonna say anything otherwise, either. Not if they want to see the other side of high school in one piece."

"What kind of stupid bluff is that?" One of the linebackers, Reid, called from the middle of the pack. "I'm bigger than you, Baxter, even if you are the quarterback."

"Stupid! If he could do it to Fenton, he could do it to you."

Dash hated how all their wide, staring eyes centered on him, the belief in all their faces. To them, he was a killer. And if he wanted to get away without ending up in jail, or worse, off the team, then he had to keep them thinking that way.

Dash cracked his knuckles and the whole team flinched. Good.

"Nothing happened," he snarled one last time, then stalked back toward the camp. If Dash wasn't scared out of his mind he would have been proud of the way the bigger boys parted in front of him. But all he could see was that Fenton kid's scared white face, eyes staring right at him till he vanished into the dark of the ravine.

* * *

><p>Danny might have laughed, listening to this exchange from under a nearby overhang, if it hadn't been so creepy. Dash might have knocked him off the bluff, but he hadn't fallen far. Ghost powers were handy like that.<p>

"Leave me for dead, Dash? Really?" he muttered, crossing his invisible arms. His first day at summer camp and the jocks had already driven him off a cliff. Literally. They were lucky he was a half-ghost superhero in his spare time.

Danny was half tempted to fly home and let the idiot sweat about murdering him for a few weeks… but then again, he really, really needed that PE grade.

Oh well. The look on the quarterback's face when he showed up at breakfast would have to do.

Just as he turned to fly back to the camp, a chill ran through him, a wisp of cold mist escaping through his lips. He paused, glancing over his shoulder, into the deep, dark woods across the ravine. A ghost? All the way out here?

Curiosity got the better of him, and he turned. It wouldn't hurt to just take a quick look... right?

A hoarse voice came out of the dark right next to his ear. "Don't do it."

Danny stopped mid-flight, pinwheeling his arms for balance. He twisted around wildly, searching for the source. He backpedaled away and brought up a hand full of vivid green ectoplasm, half flashlight, half defense. "Who's there?"

The green light picked out a silhouette: a slight, cloaked figure hovering over the yawning dark of the ravine. "A friend."

"Who...who are you?" Danny caught a glimpse of a gear-shaped medallion under the folds of concealing fabric. "Clockwork?"

"Close, but wrong." The figure pushed back his hood. Danny found his own face—thin, wild-eyed, but definitely his—staring back. There was a blast burn on one cheek, crusted with red and green.

"Woah. Dude, are you me? Is the future screwed up again? What happened to you? ...to me? "

The other Danny shrugged, clutching his hand to his chest in what looked like an unconscious gesture. "Believe me, you don't want to know. Just… don't go out there." His eyes roved to the woods stretching out behind them. "Everything turns out bad if you do."

Danny studied his double, searching for a trick. His eyes fell on the medallion; that couldn't be faked. "What's out there?"

"Nothing good. Don't follow your ghost sense while you're at camp, no matter what. Don't go ghost at all. Try not to go anywhere there aren't trails and people. Just… yeah." The ghost swallowed. "Stay out of the woods."

Something in his double's voice kept him from asking too many questions. "O-okay."

The other ghost turned to go, then paused, glancing over his shoulder. "And… tell Mom and Dad. The minute you get home."

Slowly, Danny nodded. "Right. I've been meaning to tell them for a while. Guess that's as good a time as any."

The other Danny pulled his hood up and disappeared with a flicker of ecto-energy. "Don't wait."

* * *

><p>Danny's past self, unharmed, uncaptured, trudged back toward the cabins, obediently in human form. Danny breathed a sigh of relief, tossing aside the borrowed cloak. It was just that easy. He'd changed the past. The worst part was over.<p>

Now to go home for real, to a future where the GIW had never captured him, where Mom hadn't hurt him, where he was the ghost hunter, the friend, the son that he was supposed to be.

A smile crept onto his lips for the first time that night. Normalcy. as much as any half ghost hero could have it, anyway. He slipped the medallion off his neck, letting it drop with a thud to the dark forest floor and waited for that weird, tugging, dissolving feeling that came with returning to your own time.

Nothing.

Danny stared at his faintly glowing gloves, which stayed stubbornly solid, stubbornly there. He glanced around at the woods, which loomed around him dark and threatening. Nothing had happened. He was still in the past.

"I don't understand," he said aloud, blankly, almost plaintively. Exhaustion and frustration rolled through him; he just wanted to go home. Why wasn't it working?!

He glanced down at the medallion, only to catch the faintest glimmering outline as it vanished. With a cry, he pounced on it, but it was gone. He was alone, stranded in the past, but—why?

"Why can't I go back?" He called out, wondering if in some dark, timeless corner of the Ghost Zone, a ghost with a staff was looking down on him, even now, his shifting face solemn with pity. "I changed the future, didn't I? I fixed things! I should go home now, back to…"

Then it hit him, what he'd done. It was like a thousand pound weight dropped on his chest.

The future, he'd changed it. Completely. That future, his future, was gone.

The Danny that had gone back to the summer camp would never go through everything he'd experienced at the GIW, wouldn't have to experience Mom doing… feel any of that. And that… that wasn't him anymore. Just like his evil older self hadn't been. Just like the thing in that thermos, he was no longer part of time. Danny couldn't go back. His time was gone, erased, just like the future that had destroyed his family.

He couldn't breathe. Danny dropped to his knees, fingers floundering through the loose leaves, his head spinning. He could never go back. Not home. Mom, Dad, Jazz, Tucker, Sam… anyone he cared about, he'd never see them again.

"Is this it? Is this your price?!" He screamed at the the empty woods. "How is this fair? You said you'd let me fix it!" He collapsed, squeezing his eyes shut. "I just wanted to go home."

After a while the panic died down, and he actually started to think.

It… it wasn't that bad.

He could go back, he tried to tell himself. Maybe crash at Sam's until the other him—Danny—got back and could explain things. They'd managed with two Dannys before, right? A-and Dani had worked out okay...wherever she was.

It'd be okay. Not great, but okay. He just had to get home.

The idea energized him. He sprang up, closed his eyes, searched for that faint tug at the back of his soul that was better than a homing beacon—there. The portal, burning bright and warm in the heart of Fenton Works. Home.

He took off like a shot, tearing through the woods, flashing intangible at odd moments to cut through branches, darting in between the rest, feeling the slither of leaves sweeping past him as he flew. His body was aching, energy seeping from him with every second, but he knew that he wouldn't give in until he made it. The word sang through his mind in a chant. _Home, home, home, home, ho—_

Pain sliced his face and arms—something yanked him to a standstill with whiplash suddenness. A web of silvery-white, near invisible fibers wavered into focus close to his face. He cried out and struggled, sending new arcs of pain tightening around his arms and limbs, until he was completely entangled—his momentum swung him hard into a tree.

Haloes of light exploded in front of his eyes. Danny hung there, limp and gasping, as reality sank in. His fingers curled around the cruel wire-fine netting and tried in vain to phase. A net. An ectoproof net. A ghost trap. Here. That meant… no.

"No, nononono, not this, not this," he muttered, ignoring the sharp slices of pain from the net as he struggled harder.

There were distant shouts, and the sound of an ATGV revving not too far off.

_No._

Danny's breathing turned to gasps, quick and fast. The stars in front of his eyes were pinwheels now, spinning crazily. A wind blew, the trees snickering and whispering around him. Clockwork must be laughing too. Sick bastard.

How could he have been so stupid? He'd been caught—_how_ could he have—it was like a horror inside an evil dream inside a nightmare.

The ATV screeched into sight, bumping over roots and underbrush. Danny froze. Three men in white coats clambered out. They strode across the leafy ceiling of his upside down gaze, peering up at him through bulky night vision goggles. The effect was alien, buglike, and completely terrifying. Danny stared wide-eyed back.

"Is that…" one said slowly.

"It is." The leader snatched a radio off his belt, and he turned it on with a crackle of static. "Outpost three, this is Agent 32, code number 03971. We've got the big one. Yeah. Phantom."

There was a splash of static, then the response, faint and tinny. "All the way out here in the wilderness? That's not Phantom's MO. What's he doing here?"

"I have no idea, but I'm not complaining. Notify headquarters asap. Agent 32 out." He tucked the radio away in his belt, muttering, "If I don't get promoted to letter agent for this, I'm changing agencies. Let's take it into custody. It looks stunned, this should be nice and easy…"

Something about the three pairs of hands reaching for him snapped Danny out of the numb haze that had stricken him.

_I can't go back._

* * *

><p>The GIW agents had collected a broken nose, two black eyes, and multiple burns between the three of them by the time it was all over. They sat on the back of the ATV, puffing and blowing.<p>

"Should've waited for backup." The statement was followed by the silence of glum agreement.

"After this, the lab techs can deal with it."

A long silence, punctuated with dull thuds from inside the van and their own breath.

"What do you think it meant, 'don't take me back there?'" One of them ventured at last.

"Who knows?" Agent 32 shrugged. "It's a ghost. They'll say anything to throw you off your game. You can't let it get to you. They aren't people."

"Screamed like one, though. Reminds me of—" the agent stopped abruptly and stared at his scuffed black shoes. He was the youngest of the three, the lowest ranked. He shouldn't say anything. "I was in the Middle East for a while, before I moved into domestic warfare. Sounds you don't forget, you know?"

Agent 32 gave him a not-unfriendly nudge in the shoulder. "You let the higher-ups hear you talking like that, and you're gone."

"Yeah, yeah. Trust me, I know. That thing," he jerked his head toward their cargo, "isn't sentient or anything. Just sayin' it's creepy, that's all."

* * *

><p>Maddie had expected tight security at this experimental government facility, but paranoid didn't even begin to describe it. She'd given a blood sample, her fingerprints, a photo ID, and a retinal scan, all in trade for the small plastic security badge now secured to the front of her lab coat. She suspected it would not give her nearly enough access to begin satisfying her curiosity.<p>

"Not that I don't appreciate the opportunity," she said. "But why bring a civilian into this?"

"Our agents are trained to capture and destroy paranormal threats," Agent L responded. "But as for interrogation and examination, we tend to lack... subtlety."

Maddie eyed a particularly large green stain that covered the floor and part of the wall. Unsubtle, indeed, she thought with amusement. "I see."

The lab was oddly quiet as they entered; Maddie had been half expecting to walk in and be assaulted by the so-called ghost hero's incessant banter. Instead, Maddie found him sitting cross-legged midair, hands clenched in fists on his knees. He looked more gaunt than she remembered, jumpsuit torn in places. One glove was white, but the other, for some unknown reason, had turned a solid black.

Strange. Just a week ago, he'd looked perfectly normal.

When the deep-set, eerie green eyes fell on her, their light flickered and dimmed. He swallowed visibly. "Uh… hey…" his gaze roamed over the GIW agents, then back to her. The ghost sighed deeply. "Maddie."

"That's Dr. Fenton to you, ghost," she returned reflexively, though it had a tang of uncertainty to it. Sheer misery hung around the young ghost like a pall. Such a behavioral shift was strange in a ghost… and disconcerting, to say the least.

Agent L studied her, frowning in what she was beginning to think of as his signature expression. "We were unaware that you knew this entity."

"Hardly. I—"

"Ha!" Phantom's laugh tore out sharp and bitter, lashing against the corners of the steel-plated laboratory. "That's for sure, you don't." He dropped his head and muttered something unintelligible to his knees, hands clenching and unclenching convulsively.

Maddie's lips set in a hard line. She refused to be thrown off by this ecto-entity's theatrics on the first day. It was just a ghost, after all.

"Don't worry," she said crisply. Surgical instruments had been laid out neatly on the lab table. They were gleaming stainless steel, brand new. She picked up a scalpel and inspected its razor-fine edge. "I intend to get much better acquainted."

* * *

><p><em>Those who repeat history will be doomed to face it.<em>

_- C.W._

* * *

><p>AN:

I had an unholy level of fun with this one. :)

Clockwork has been hovering in the back of my mind ever since I started the sequel. In a universe where time travel and reality-altering is a thing, the question must come up sooner or later: Why not go back and fix things? Wouldn't it be better if it had never happened? In the end I decided that Clockwork didn't really have a place in SoaD proper, but it was a question worth exploring.

If I ever have some free time (highly unlikely, but one can dream, right?) I'd love to follow it up with a couple of vignette/oneshots of where it would go from here... but for the forseeable future, you'll just have to imagine it.

-Hj


End file.
